An emerging approach to treating disease entails delivering a therapeutic agent at the treatment site and focuses the therapeutic agent's effect on the diseased tissue.
Conventional technologies for delivering such agents generally lack sufficient sophistication for realizing full therapeutic potential. Aggressive handling resulting from these technologies, such as attempting to inject the agents with a conventional syringe, may compromise therapeutic effectiveness due to shear forces, imprecise placement at a treatment site, and leakage or escape of the agents from the treatment site after the delivery. For example, retaining therapeutic cells, such as stem or progenitor cells, injected into the myocardium can be challenging with conventional technologies, as forces of the beating heart may tend to eject the cells from the treatment site prior to realizing therapeutic potential.
Accordingly, a need exists for improved delivery methods and devices.